Bed numbers for mentally ill 'too low'

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Patients were forced to spend an inappropriately long time in
emergency departments waiting for acute mental-health beds and were
often discharged before beds become available, a report released
today by the NSW Auditor-General has found.

Access to after-hours services was also lacking.

There were more than 24,000 acute admissions of patients with a
mental illness in 2003-04, representing an 11 per cent increase
over the last three years, the report found.

Over the same period, the NSW Government opened an additional
122 acute mental-health beds, bringing the statewide total to 1136
or 22 beds per 100,000 adults, it said.

Despite these increases, Auditor-General Bob Sendt found bed
numbers remained below the Department of Health target of 31 beds
per 100,000 adults and resources were not equitably distributed
across the state.

"In one rural hospital we visited we found that some mental
health patients completed their intensive treatment in the
emergency department without accessing a mental-health bed," his
report found.

NSW Health welcomed the report's recommendations, saying work
had already commenced on a number of the issues.

Include a private and secure space for conducting mental-health
assessments in any new or refurbished emergency department.

Establish a benchmark for access block for mental-health
patients and report performance in annual reports. Access block is
a blockage that prevents patient flow from an emergency department
to a ward.